The Cave
by Chipping
Summary: When Jeff Winger finds out that Annie Edison is studying abroad for the summer in Israel, with Ian Duncan as her "personal mentor," Jeff knows he's got to make preventative measures. And those preventative measures mean a summer of study in a country halfway across the globe, Annie Edison and slew of the Greendale gang included. Jeff/Annie. Sexy times will happen.
1. Chapter 1

**The Cave**

Jeff saw the pamphlets first. They were sitting haphazardly on the study table when he came into the library earlier than his usual twenty-minutes-late. He was hoping (praying) to the gods of got-drunk-the-night-before-in-a-place-too-far-from-home-and-slept-in-your-car-in-a-drug-store-parking-lot that no one would notice that his clothes were the exact same as yesterday. And that he was wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day. In the indoors.

But no one was in there, not quite yet. Well, no one but Annie Edison's slew of academia: a backpack that looked so perfect he was pretty sure she ironed it, two brightly polka-dotted folders, and a Biology textbook. All of this meant, he knew, that she'd probably been there hours before. Hell, she had probably already outlined their study plans. Or _her_ study plans that he would snag twenty minutes before their final in order to bullshit his way through another class.

Jeff sat down, making sure to shield his eyes from the fluorescent lights. "Whoever Captain Morgan is, I'm going to find that sonuvabitch and punch him in the balls," he grumbled, his head down and ready to assume the going-to-sleep position. However, that's when he noticed it: the glossy glare of that pamphlet.

Of course, it wasn't like he hadn't seen those same pamphlets before. They were everywhere, around every corner. They had seen them in these little pockets all the way to the ceiling in the registrar's office. He hadn't paid any attention to them, because honestly? Who actually studies abroad at a community college? The fact that Greendale got him out of his bed and into another building for classes was a miracle in itself. They would be asking entirely too much in attempting to get Jeffrey Winger to A) pack and B) fly to another country and take a class.

But there they were, a whole stack of those annoyingly-cherry pamphlets just sitting there next to her backpack. And, in typical Annie Edison fashion, all those pamphlets were neatly-organized and rubber-banded together. There was one brochure loose from the pack, though, sitting on top and catching his eye. He reached over, squinting against the bright glare that bounced off the glossy paper. On the front, there was a picture of a strip of ancient ruins and a pair of extra-Caucasian tourists smiling and waving. Above their heads, two little clipart dialogue bubbles exclaimed, "_Shalom!_" The top of the brochure, in gigantic Comic Sans, a gigantic headline screamed, "Study in Jerusalem!"

"Comic Sans? For real? What is this, a Sunday school teacher's yard sale flyer?" He said, flipping the brochure open and casually eying the inside. There was some sort of description of the classes they were offering and some stock photos of the sites to see, all of which he doubted anybody from Greendale could certify were actually things to see in Jerusalem. He flipped it over and then almost threw it back into Annie's stuff when it dawned on him: _Annie Edison is thinking about studying abroad. _

But then: "Good morning!" It was her voice, like straight sunshine. His brain literally cringed inside his skull, trying to scuttle away like a frightened animal from her chirpiness.

"Could you speak in your indoor voice, Annie?" He squinted his eyes against the light and the sound of her voice binging around inside his skull. How did she always manage to be this fucking happy so early in the morning every single morning?

"This _is _an indoor voice," she said, and he could immediately tell she was miffed. There was a second inside of him that felt like a douchebag for not only coming into school irritated and with bad hair but also... "You're drunk, Jeff Winger. And you smell like a hobo."

He opened his mouth to retort, but then quickly closed it. She was right. He smelled like he had tipped himself into a vat of shitty scotch and old man vomit... and that wasn't too far from what was actually on him.

"Alan wanted to make sure I wasn't really gay," he growled. He rubbed his head slowly with his knuckles. "So, he made me go to a strip club. It was... is there a word that describes something worse than awful?"

"Despicable?" She offered, quickly. Too quickly. "Jeff, gross! You went to a strip club? I knew the smell of strawberry body spray was awful strong."

He opened his eyes, blinked slowly, before looking at her.

"What the fuuuuuu..." he trailed off himself, stopping himself, but just barely. Seriously, though. _What the everliving fuck? _Did she really have to look that stupid perfect this early in the morning? What did she do, get up as the sun was barely peeking above the horizon to comb her hair an exact amount of times? She was wearing this short denim skirt number and a lacy pink... thing. Was it just him, or were her camisoles getting decidedly lower cut? The last thing he needed this morning – the morning after a night full of flashing lights and women with names like "Popsicle Joy" – was a boner. And the early morning cleavage (really great cleavage at that) was not helping with the whole boner situation.

She lowered her eyebrows suspiciously before sort of half-shaking her head. Good, he doubted that she had heard him. Then, sighing, she said, "I have Excedrin if you need it. And a bottle of water." She strode quickly to her backpack, unzipped and rummaged through it. Then, with an exasperated look on her face, she took out what looked like a first-aid kit. She removed a green bottle of pills and a small half-pint bottle of water. "Take two pills, drink the whole bottle. At least it will get the vomit out of your mouth."

He wanted to remark about her tartness and how little he appreciated it, and how he didn't like cute smart-ass women judging him this early in the morning (that's why they had Shirley goddammit), but the fact was that she was right: he probably needed the _whole _bottle of pills, and he was thirsty as hell (and he didn't really remember throwing up but it must have happened at some point). So, begrudgingly, he took a couple pills and chugged the entire bottle of water in pretty much one gulp.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," she mumbled. When he looked up at her, she had that saucer-wide-eye look on her face. Those huge eyes fluttered for a second before she looked intently into her backpack.

"I know that you think strip clubs are gross. I get it, Annie. Can we suspend the judgment until after this hangover from the very pits of hell has subsided?"

"No. I mean, it's not the strip club. I don't care about you going to a strip club. That's... that's fine." She was talking quicker now, and he could perhaps see some kind of fluster rising in her cheeks. She fumbled with her backpack's zipper. "I meant, I wish you wouldn't go out with Alan. He's _awful_. He's the most selfish person that I've ever. And he ruined your life! And you still work for him even after everything he's ever done and ever said. I just. You deserve better, Jeff. That's all."

He blinked slowly. His head was about to slice open, he was sure, but all he could see was her stupid, clean face and the flushed apples of her cheeks. And he was definitely not expecting that, not at all, especially at this early of an hour. He wasn't really sure that anyone actually gave a _damn_ that his work life was a living hell. He imagined that the study group had all assumed was the case, just a normal part of Jeff Winger's life. Never mind the bags under his eyes, the tension in his jaw. Just another day as an underling at a law office with Satan as Boss and a position that was so demoted from where he used to be that it was just fucking depressing, end of story. Here she was though, noting that she had noticed, noticed his weary sighs and she thought it wasn't fair, not fair at all. And it felt surprisingly reassuring to know that she just knew, understood maybe.

Shaking his head, Jeff said, "Alan's. Alan's all right, I guess." The lie pretty much hissed between his teeth, but the sad look in her face was just too much. "I mean, he's a sonuvabitch, and you have to chaperone him at strip clubs because he'll get himself arrested and then not pay you – all of that theoretical for legal reasons – but deep, deep, deep, deep, _deep _down.. he might be a good guy?" It was the worst lie of all time, and he knew it, Annie knew it, but he couldn't figure what else to say other than, "I'm never drinking again."

Annie huffed. "If I had a dollar for every time either you or Britta said that, I'd be able to move out of Troy and Abed's place."

He chuckled, even though it sort of hurt his head; his whole brain felt like it was rattling inside his skull. "True enough. Although it's not like you actually want to move out of that wonderland, right? It's always an adventure with Troy and Abed."

"And Britta," she mumbled, quietly. Too quietly. Quietly in a way where she-didn't-want-to-him-to-hear-her quietly.

"What was that?" He asked, looking at her, pointedly. "What about Britta?"

"Oh... nothing! Nothing at all. Who said anything about Britta?" She bounced into her study chair anxiously, busying herself quite intently again with zipping up her backpack. She had done her hair back in a ponytail and her face was surprisingly non-madeup today. She looked really nice, really... all right. She looked _all right._ He caught himself just in time, just in time to keep his imagination in check, the same imagination that sometimes would run away from him and have him in a field of daisies playing with a golden retriever and Annie jumping up and down in this skimpy sundress number. He sent his mind somewhere else, quickly, trying to remind himself of something that made him want to retch. Like Alan getting a lap dance. Yep, that would do it. Upchuck reflex was engaged.

On any other day, Annie's terrible avoidance of a subject would instantly peek his curiosity. But today, there was a hangover growing in his head like a alien pregnancy, and it was about Britta, so _eh_. And, also, _also_, she was staring at his hand, the one that was still clutching that glossy pamphlet.

"So, um, did you suddenly take an interest in bad fonts or something?" He asked, following her gaze to where the paper was a little crumpled in his grasp. Her face was, for a second, unreadable. But then, suddenly, she frowned, her eyes looking into her own thoughts. "You're not actually... _going_ on a study-abroad trip with – and if it's possible to put more emphasis on the next thing I'm about to say, I would like to do that – _Greendale Community College_?"

She bit her lip for a brief second, and looked at him, really looked at him. He had been too groggy to really actually look her in the eye all morning, half for shame and half because she was often standing too close to a light source. But now she was looking him right in the eye, and she was trying to find something there. And her gaze caught him off-guard, something inside of him literally flipping over. And although he instantly said to his fluttering heart, _Woah there, partner... that's the cheap scotch, nothing more, _he knew that it wasn't the scotch and it wasn't being hungover and it wasn't because it was six-thirty in the fucking AM. It was, unfortunately, something bigger than that. Whatever _that_ was, damned if he knew. Jeff Winger didn't deal with this sort of thing, wasn't a fan of letting his heart do strange things in his chest, things he had never felt it do before.

And all of that – the heart beating and the sudden clammy palms – made him say the next totally dipshit thing: "Annie, you've got to be kidding me. You're actually going to go on this batshit crazy extravaganza?"

And that's where he lost her, instantly. She folded her lips into a very solid frown and crossed her arms across her chest. "Well," she huffed, "why not? I just talked to my advisor and he said that I would be able to take on a smaller class load next semester if I did some of my studying in the summer. And I want to volunteer next year at the children's hospital, and so..."

He waved his hands in the air for her to stop, shaking his head. "Okay, kid, first of all, slow down. Second off, this is a terrible idea. Thirdly, isn't your advisor Professor Duncan? Pretty sure he'd tell you that you could be queen of England if he got to stare at your boobs for a couple seconds." He shut his mouth quickly there, because the last thing he needed right now was to be reminded of boobs around Annie Edison.

"Well, you'd know a lot about that," she huffed in his direction. He blinked, quickly looked up at her. Her face, instantly, grew the slightest shade of pink. "I mean, because you went to a... nightclub" and here she made some extraordinary exaggerated air-quotes, "with Alan. Where, I'm sure, there were plenty of... those things."

"Boobs?" He asked, quietly.

"Yes! Boobs! I said it. There, you happy?" Her face was turning this sort of adorable shade of scarlet and Jeff was slightly pissed that it was endearing rather than awkward.

He frowned before shaking his head. "Okay, circumventing the boobs issue, you do realize that this study-abroad program is two months long, right? As in, it's going to take your entire summer. As in, you're not going to get to do anything cool. All summer."

The heat was slowly draining from her face, but she still looked pretty irritated. "Other than be in Israel, in one of the oldest cities on the planet? Yeah, sounds like a real drag, Jeff." She grabbed the brochure out of his hand, missing at first but then finally rather awkwardly pulling it away with some sort of cute indignation. She flipped through it, not really reading it, before mumbling, "Besides, what am I going to do all summer anyway? Be ignored by all of you?"

"Wha... what?" He said, regretting how the pitch of his voice made his brain hurt. Those pills could start working pronto. "What are you talking about, Annie? We don't ignore you."

She rolled her eyes half-heartedly, as if he was rehashing an old subject. "Please. Shirley has three kids, Pierce naps most of the time, Abed has his constant love affair with pop culture, and Troy and Britta... well," and there she stopped, looking guiltily at him.

He sighed before shaking his head, "Yes, Annie, I know... they're fucking. Good for them. Although I'm sure living with that is like having a cat lie on your face: Cute at first, but really annoying after awhile."

The heat went back to her face. "I... I wasn't going to say it like... like _that_."

He blinked, trying to decide whether the naivety was grating or endearing at this moment. "Say fucking? That's what they're doing, right?"

She looked at him, this time with that look again. He swallowed, forcing his breathing to not do something weird. "It's not. Well, yes. They're doing _that_." She opened, closed, re-opened the brochure. "The point, though, is that it's not just that." She smiled. "They really, really, really like each other. It's. It's nice."

Her smile was infectious, he could feel something growing on his lips, too. But, he fought the urge to grin, buckled himself down. He needed to make sure that he was grounded, that he wasn't so affected but a sentimental, caring, smart girl. Nope. He wasn't going to do that, wasn't going down that road.

"Yeah, well. That's great." Annie raised an eyebrow, and he chuckled, holding up his hands in surrender. "No, _seriously. _I'm seriously glad for them. Took them long enough, Jesus. Didn't Troy have a crush on her since the first year we were here?"

"You mean when I had a crush on him and you had a crush on Britta?" She asked, solidly. She didn't even blink, her voice even, cool.

He coughed. "Okay, well... yes. I guess so. But that's not the point!" He snatched the brochure back, and waved it in the air. "You're trying to skirt around the issue that you are – and let me repeat myself that I want added emphasis to this – _going on a study-abroad trip with a community college. With Greendale Community College_."

She frowned intensely before squinting her eyes. "I heard you the first time, _Jeffrey_. But I've already put down my travel deposit, gotten my passport, made an extensive and thorough packing list, made an emergency contact list for Abed, invested in several excellent sturdy sports br-"

"Okay, okay!" He says, holding up his hands in surrender. "I get it. Your preparedness is thoroughly Annie-esque. But the fact is that this isn't like you, Annie Edison. You don't just go... off and travel and not send us each hundred-point questionnaires about anything we might need from you this summer."

"Hey!" She interjected, crossing her arms across her chest. Her lower-lip turned into this absurd pouty-thing before she lowered herself in her seat. "Last summer's was only fifty questions."

Rolling his eyes, Jeff flipped quickly through the flyer before adding, "Plus, who's even going on this thing? You, Garrett, and his asthma inhaler?"

She made a grab for the flyer, but he pulled it back just in time. "I'll have you know that not only is Rich, Quendra-with-a-Q-U going, and Vicky, but Professor Duncan has promised to be my personal mentor throughout the entire trip."

His brain stopped. Actually stopped. Then his heart. Then his breathing. The grin that had been on his face by her pathetic (and sorta kinda adorable) attempts at grabbing the flyer dissolved instantly.

"Jeff?" She asked, her face suddenly concerned and in nurse-mode. "Jeff, are you all right?"

Was he all right? Was she fucking kidding? Did she think that the list she just spouted out would comfort him in the least?

"Jeff-?"

He held up a hand, looking blankly ahead. "We will ignore Rich – the closet serial-killer – for now in favor of addressing the horrible thing that just came out of your mouth. Duncan has promised to be your... _what_?"

Her face was firmly folded in a frown, even to her crinkled forehead. "My personal mentor? What's so bad about that?"

"What's so?" His eyes snapped right to her face, which resembled a deer-in-the-headlights. "Is there anything_ not_ bad about that, Annie? Professor Duncan used to refer to you as 'Boobs.' Just _boobs_."

"Well, so did you!" she said quickly before snapping her mouth shut. They both stared at each other awkwardly, the silence between them terse and ringing with this strange tension.

He blinked, lowering his hands as if trying to pat down that last statement. "Okay, maybe, yes, I might have called you... _that _when I was crazy because I was high on freaking monkey gas. But I was also not your professor when I called you that. And from the text messages that he's sent me before, I know his feelings about your..." he paused, felt something warm spread across his face. He gestures to her chest. "Whatever. That's not important. What is important is that you are not allowed to go on a trip with Professor Duncan. Period. End of..."

But then she exploded, all one hundred pounds of her, jumping out of her seat, her eyes aflame. She pointed a slender finger expressively in his direction. "No. No, Jeffrey Winger. You are not allowed to do this anymore. You are not allowed to dictate what I'm permitted to do. You're not allowed to judge what I do."

He frowned, holding his hands up in surrender. He could see the boldness in her face burn brighter than usual, but it was still crumbling under its own weight. "Woah there! I never tell you what to do."

"Oh, really? You never tell me what to do, never tell me that I can't hang out with certain people, never can have a crush on whoever I want? _Never_, huh?" She snapped, and instantly Jeff realized in that moment that he had made a very big mistake, because suddenly he was having flashbacks of shirtless hippie douchebags and ultimatums in men's bathrooms.

He knitted his eyebrows, trying to reel back from these thoughts. He didn't need that, not now, not when his best friend's life (and semi-innocent sexuality) was on the line. Best not to dwell on _feelings_ and other bullshittery in times like these.

"Listen, Annie" he said slowly, calculated, as if he was trying to talk her down from a ledge. "I only did those things because you were thinking of asking out a serial killer. May I repeat that: A. Serial. Killer. I was only trying to protect you."

She huffed. "Oh get over it, Jeff. You just didn't want me hanging out with a guy that had better hair than you."

He narrowed his eyes. "You're treading dangerous waters there, Edison."

Annie gathered her things up quickly, flustered in her typical Annie-way (too much, too quickly, and with too much endearing gusto). She pointed one last finger at him, and although he knew she was going for intimidating, it ended up kind of looking hilarious. "You, Jeff Winger, are not going to stop me from going to Israel just so you can ignore me like usual this summer. I'm going to Jerusalem and I'm going to become a more enlightened individual and if I want Professor Duncan to call me boobs or whatever he wants to call me, than I'm allowed to do that. Nobody wanted to protect me before I got these... things anyway!" And here she motioned quite generously to Professor Duncan's nickname. He could tell that she was so angry that nothing could embarrass her now, not even her own sexuality.

She started stalking away, right out of the study room, her tiny hands fisted and her face set in a very solid scowl. As she marched out the back door, Pierce slide around her, both of them awkwardly bumping shoulders. She ignored him, but Pierce stared at her wide-eyed.

He turned to Jeff, raised his eyebrows. "I heard something about her allowing Duncan to call her boobs."

"Shut-up, Pierce," Jeff mumbled, watching the space where she was sitting just a few seconds ago. Her words, _so you can ignore me like usual_ rang inside his head like a bell. And this time it wasn't the hangover

Either Pierce didn't hear him or he just choose to ignore him, because he said, "But that's good news right? If she's giving Duncan a chance, that means that you and me are still in the game." He extended his fist, looking at Jeff expectedly.

He stared blankly at Pierce's outstretched gesture before saying, "You can't honestly expect me to fist bump you in honor of our good friend, Annie, getting exploited by a perverted Anglophile?"

Pierce looked miffed. "Well, I didn't know that he was Anglican. I'm not a religious bigot." He shook his head and sat down in his chair before saying, "And when a man wants to fist-bump you, Jeff, don't leave him hanging. Don't be such a dick."

Sighing, Jeff shut his eyes tight. He couldn't be doing this right now, not today, not when the alcohol from last night was still poisoning every ounce of his being. He couldn't be having Pierce's ridiculousness, and Annie's adorable indignation, and the image of Duncan playfully slapping her backside all summer, he couldn't have any of those things in his mind. But the more he clenched his eyes closed, the more her face came to him. And what was more, what was stirring more than seven rounds of boilermakers in his stomach, was the nauseating idea that for two and half months, he wouldn't see her, _couldn't _see Annie Edison because she would be half a world away having new experiences and meeting new people, all without him in her life. That thought, more than anything, made him want to scream.

He stood up too quickly, hitting his knee on the table. Cursing under his breathe, he stared at the pamphlet still crumpled in his fist before shaking his head. "I'm a fucking masochist," he said before striding out the room, storming out the library doors and down the hallways of Greendale.

"All right, Professor Perverted-Harry-Potter, here I come. Booyah," he said, crumpling the pamphlet in his fist.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Cave  
pt. 2**

Duncan was watching a One Direction music video when Jeff stormed into the office. They both regarded each other for a second, Jeff huffing in the doorway and his eyebrows stitched together. Briefly, his mind flipped through the options of blackmail, harassment, and physical harm, but he settled on: "You stay away from her."

Reaching over, Duncan quickly shut off his television. He motioned towards the television. "So, are we going to pretend that this moment never happened?"

Jeff reconsidered the blackmail option. "We can make all of this go away, no problem. It'll cost you."

The both of them glared each other skeptically, eyebrows raised. Jeff ran through the people who would actually care that Duncan was watching music videos of shaggy-hair boyband; he couldn't think of a single person. He held up his fist full of pamphlet, not quite sure if Duncan could even see what the hell it was. But, honestly, he didn't care.

Duncan exhaled and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He must have known what the crushed piece of paper was, because he said, "Oh, so this is about your little friend-with-the-boobs. All right. What do you want, Seacrest?"

It was taking everything in his power not to just throw a fist square at Duncan's face. "You're going to stay away from her. Do you hear me? Because if you so much as air-cup her ass in Israel, I will find you and make sure that your Boy Band secret isn't the only thing that gets out. That's right... I know about your Beanie Baby stash. Why are you even keeping those things?"

Duncan stood up and snapped, "They're collector's items! They're worth something!"

Jeff shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. "Listen, all that is not the point. The point is that if I hear anything about you so much as looking the wrong way at Annie, I will seriously report your paste-y white ass to the Dean for professor-student harassment." He took a step forward, closing Duncan's door behind him in what he thought looked like a half-way formidable gesture.

Duncan, however, looked entirely nonplussed. Lifting a finger in the air, he said, "Ah, but see here's the problem with that little arrangement that you just proposed, Esquire of Nothing: I'm not going as a professor. I'm going as Annie's fellow student. A peer, as they say."

Jeff stopped. His stomach turned into a nauseous knot, and he was pretty sure it had nothing to do with his hangover. "What? Did you just say?"

Standing up, Duncan strolled around his desk so that he could lean casually against the edge. He had this look on his face that Jeff wanted to wipe off with a good (manly) slap. "Well, well, well. Plot-twist, eh?" At this, Duncan tried to raise a smug eyebrow, but his butt slid off the desk and he just sort of stumbled before finding his footing. He smoothed the front of his sweater vest before trying to look unaffected. "The fact is that Professor Ian Duncan, PhD, will be auditing this class. Master becoming a pupil kind of bullshit thing. I figure that you can never stop learning. Especially when it comes to boobs. And let me tell you this, your little study buddy has a set that I wouldn't mind learning." For extra illustration, Duncan reached out and sort of made this cupping motion that Jeff supposed was supposed to be lewd but sort of resembled a cow being milked.

A couple times in his life, Jeff had seen red. The first time, it was when his father had left a small quarter-sized bruise on his mother's right cheek, just small enough that she could convince people that she actually fell, just small enough that it was truly a coward's mark. The second time, he was high on monkey gas and thought he was going to lose a strange group of weirdos who were his family. This moment, the moment where Jeff could see Ian Duncan getting Annie Edison drunk and alone and putting his hand up her shirt? This moment was the third time.

Jeff could feel his lips turning into a straight line as he stepped menacingly towards Duncan. His fist was clenched so tight he thought the skin covering his knuckles might split. All he wanted to do was smash bone or, you know, get into a gnarly fight or _something_. "If I hear – nay _sense – _that you are within ten feet of her at any given point in this trip, I'll-"

"Oh come off it! You'll do _what,_ exactly?"

Jeff blinked. He was standing only a foot away from Duncan, but Duncan looked the opposite of frightened. He actually looked rather annoyed.

Duncan rolled his eyes. "Listen here, Winger. We used to be so-called friends, although 'strip club buddies' hardly seems to qualify much in terms of friendship. I get that. But the fact is that I owe you squat now. The way I see it, if you so much as scratch me, you're looking at four years down the drain. Because you've already been expelled once..."

Jeff pointed a finger that almost touched Duncan's wrinkled sweater vest, "... that was because the original Dean had been kidnapped by a psychotic Asian man who had a Hitler-complex. That was not my fault."

The laugh Duncan belted out was about as sardonic as they come. "Oh, please. And how many people are going to believe that?" It was Duncan's turn to step forward, a smug-ass expression on his face. Jeff stood his ground, but he could hear Duncan's words sinking in: "Anything you try to explain to anyone else outside Greendale – and I mean literally _anyone_ outside of Greendale – is going to think you're insane. So your best bet is to keep your head down, shut your mouth, not cause trouble, and get the hell out of this circus with your degree. And, also, you should let me grab your friend's cans."

Red, again. Jeff stepped forward, his jaw clenched tight enough to chip a tooth. His fist raised just a quarter of an inch, but Duncan made a tsk-ing noise.

"Nuh-uh-uh! Remember what we said, Jeffrey: one brush against this baby-smooth pale skin and your ass is on the road to expulsion."

Pursing his lips, Jeff stood back and eyed Duncan. Unfortunately, for once in Duncan's pathetic existence, the man was right. The second Jeff Winger punched a professor, he was a goner and he had just flushed three years of the most pointless academia down the drain. And, more unfortunately, Duncan, as a student, was totally within his rights to (Jeff suppressed his gag reflex) sleep with Annie Edison. Hell, Jeff had slept with Slater when she was his actual professor. Greendale's policy was sort of lax in general, but still! There might be some leverage if Duncan was her professor and got her drunk and then... Jeff didn't want to finish that thought.

And Duncan's plan was brilliant in one other way: No one else in the group was going to go with Annie on this mad-cap adventure across the globe. Abed was against traveling outside his time zone, Troy was too busy with the whole "Britta situation" (i.e. he was really into getting laid), Britta liked sex in general and now she was getting to have it with a guy who wasn't a complete ass, Shirley had a couple hundred children it seemed, Pierce was not even a feasible option, and Jeff Winger? Jeff Winger did _not_ go on study abroad trips. He _would _not.

"So step back there, Seacreast." Duncan's voice cut through Jeff's thoughts, his voice dripping with overconfidence. He smiled slyly up into Jeff's face before saying, "I mean, what's the deal anyway? Are you just mad that you never got to fuck this girl?"

Red, everywhere. For a second, Jeff Winger didn't care if he threw a thousand years of education down the drain. There was a fireball of hot anger in his chest, and for a second all he wanted – and all he was sure he ever wanted – was to simply bloody up Duncan's face. There was this feeling inside him that Duncan might just succeed in groping Annie Edison, not because he was Duncan, but because Annie was Annie and she just wanted to believe the best in people even if they were shitty. And no one was going to be there to bring her to her senses. He felt his fist raise up and even though a tiny voice in his head said, "Nope. Piss poor idea, Winger," he came pretty close to landing a sucker-punch square between Duncan's eyes. But then a thought stopped him, stopped him so quickly his fist froze in mid-air.

The smallest chuckle came out of Duncan's mouth, but it sounded more like a sigh of relief. When Jeff finally was able to come out his rage and focus on Duncan's face, he was almost sure that Duncan might have pissed himself – he had that look in his eyes.

"Well, well, well..." Duncan muttered, trying to replace his white-as-a-ghost expression with something far braver. "... Looks like somebody is facing reality." He laid a hand on Jeff's shoulder. "It's all right. I'll be gentle with her. And that's a promise."

All Jeff could do was smile down into Duncan's shitty little face, because a thought had come to him at the last second, right before his knuckles made an indention into Duncan's forehead.

"Oh," he said. "You're not going to be gentle with her."

Duncan raised an eyebrow.

"Because you're not going to be _anything _with her." Jeff raised his arms in surrender, backing away slowly and uncrumpling the pamphlet that was still clenched in his fist. "You're not going to even think about touching her, because the second you do, I'm going to be right there to kick you in your probably very tiny babymaker."

Duncan blinked before holding up a finger, "Okay, a couple things wrong with that. Number one: I'll have you know that my babymaker is extraordinarily average. And second: you won't be able to be there because you're not going. Deadline to apply is tomorrow, Winger. I know you. You're not doing anything academic during the summer, not even if you have a gun pointed at your head."

He didn't know why he hadn't thought of it beforehand: Jeffrey Winger was going to study abroad. He was going to make sure that nothing bad happened to his friend and he was just _going with her_. It was so simple. Of course, it went against all of Jeff Winger's nature, but desperate times meant stupid measures.

He finished uncrumpling the brochure and then smoothed it out with his palm. The so-called study abroad paperwork was on the back of the brochure and consisted of four fill-in-the-blanks and a spot for you to staple a check.

"I think I can handle the paperwork," Jeff said before glaring up at Duncan. "And I mean what I said: if you even _think_ about touching her in any shape or form, I will mess up your chances for ever reproducing."

Duncan suddenly looked seriously nervous. He took off his glasses and wiped them anxiously on the end of his sweater vest. "Wa... wait! You can't be serious! You – _Jeffrey Winger_ – are about to apply to a school-related summer function. Think about this. Think of your summer? It's gone. All for some girl you've never fucked and apparently never intend on fucking?"

His voice was far away now, because all Jeff could think of was that he had a couple hours to get his useless application in, that his head still felt like cracking down the middle from a hangover, and that Annie's very summer depended on him making sure that Duncan stayed far, far, far, _far_ away from her.

"See you on the plane," Jeff said with a crooked smile, and before he slammed Duncan's door shut, he added, "And _shalom_!"


	3. Chapter 3

Jeff Winger had to lie. The alternative was to tell tell the truth, and the truth sounded both bumbling and psychotic: _Oh, the reason I'm coming with you on this study abroad nonsense? Because Ian Duncan wants to touch your boobies like he's milking a cow and for some reason this makes me want to punch a concrete wall_. That had more than the faint ring of crazy in it, so he lawyer-ed it up and said, "Uh. Yeah. So... apparently I'm behind in my credits because I failed that, um, pottery class? So I've got this Humanities credit I've got to get out of the way if I want to graduate on time. So. Yep. Israel. You, uh... wanna help me pack or something?" He thought the appropriate amount of _uhs _and _yeahs_ expressed enough disinterest that she might not suspect anything.

He figured at first that she might be kind of pissed, might pull that, "I'm not a kid anymore, you don't have to be such a dad all the time." It was that sort of bullshit that she dealt to him occassionally that made Jeff angriest, although he couldn't figure out why it had that effect. Maybe it was because it wasn't like that with him and Annie Edison: he wasn't her Dad, he wasn't her bodyguard. He just didn't... like the idea of anyone taking advantage of the fact that she was a good person.

So one night he slipped by her apartment (on the pretense of borrowing one of Abed's extended edition _Diehard _DVDs) to break the news. He told her exactly like he planned in the full-length mirror at his apartment. And when he was finished, Annie Edison was far from pissed. The _uhs_ and _yeahs _must have done their job, because she simply jumped up from her kitchen table and hugged him.

"Jeff!" Her hands were wrapped firmly around his waist and certain... parts of her were pressing rather tightly to him. "Do you know what this means?"

"Uh," he mumbled, half-heartedly trying to push her away from him. "That my _Jersey Shore _summer marathon is about to be tragically postponed?"

Annie looked up at him, her eyes still bright. Even his shithead, sarcastic comments weren't going to deter her this time. "You and _that _show. No, that's _not_ at all what it means. What it means is that you and me are going to be study partners for an entire two months!"

She was awful tiny, he realized. She was looking up at him with this earnest expression that was just so genuinely pleased that when he said, "Yaaaaaayyyyy," he tried to make it sound somewhat excited.

But the look on her face immediately determined that she had picked up the extreme lack of enthusiasm in his tone. She frowned, uncurled her hands from around his waist and stepped back to frown.

Jeff had come over when Abed and Troy had gone on an adventure ("Minus Britta," Annie had noted with a raised eyebrow). The adventure, Jeff was told, had something to do with finding the actual chicken fast-food restaurant from Breaking Bad. Essentially, this might be the end of both Troy and Abed, and it was going to take them awhile. So, he thought it might be the perfect time to come over and drop the study-abroad bomb without Abed commenting that this was a "predictable plot twist" and without Troy saying something endearingly innocent that would make both Annie and Jeff feel incredibly awkward.

What he hadn't planned on was Annie sitting at the kitchen table drinking wine in these absurdly short pajama bottoms. She was studying a book the size of a fist and was taking a complex series of notes. When he had arrived, she had jumped up excitedly and offered him a glass of wine.

"I haven't seen a living person in nearly seventeen hours," she said, her voice a little frantic, like she wasn't use to speaking. "Do you mind if the wine is in one of Abed's batman glasses?"

So they had both sat and talked about their study-abroad adventure, her too-excited and him trying desperately to get out of the apartment without getting caught staring at her boobs. He drank leisurely out of his glass, trying to ignore that Annie was getting slightly drunk. She had already had a couple glasses of her own and her lips were turning a plump shade of purple. There was this tiny voice in his head that said, _you could reach over and just taste her wine-tinged mouth right now_. But that was the old Jeffrey Winger, the one who didn't have a real family, the one who was literally a piece of shit. And it wasn't like that with him and Annie, no matter how fantastic her boobs were, no matter that when she smiled at him he felt sort of warm and drunk.

Or maybe he was just drunk. He lost count of his glasses of wine as Annie talked to him about how she was worried that no one would wash Abed's dishes while she was gone.

"You do realize that Abed is a grown man," he noted, and he can definitely catch this obvious slur in his speech. But he kept going: "I mean, do we even known how old Abed is? He could be my age and we'd have no idea."

Annie laughed, but it was this drunk little laugh that sounded like something in between a snort and giggle. "If that's true, I guess that makes him too old for me to date," she said casually before tipping back her fourth (or fifth?) glass of wine.

Jeff blinked, not sure how he was supposed to respond to that. "Uh, you... want more wine?" He asked before immediately wondering what the fuck had gotten into him. Annie was dangerously on the verge of sloppy-haired, Texas-accent drunkenness. He didn't need to encourage this, but still he found himself pouring her another glass from the gigantic box of wine sitting on the kitchen table.

Accepting the glass with a happy chirp, Annie added, "I've got an idea!" She stood up quickly and a little bit of wine splashed out of her glass and onto the very... full part of her shirt. "Shit!" Her voice was loud, snappy, and it caught her off-guard. She looked up at Jeff with a wide-eyed expression before busting out laughing. Her laughter becomes so heavy that she sort of had to lean against him, her forehead pressed loosely against his chest.

"Didn't think you cursed, Edison," Jeff said quickly, a smile turning on his lips. He had to admit it: he was drunk, her collarbone was flushed in this sort of adorable way, and she was leaning against him laughing; he didn't hate it one bit.

Her hair was a mess, flying into her mouth. She glanced up at him coyly before saying, "There's a lot you don't know about me, Jeff Winger."

It was her eyes that sent up the red flags. Yes, he was drunk, but she was even more drunk, and she was looking at him with those eyes that he knew were just Annie Edison being mischievous and not at all overt and flirtatious and... sexy. It was just her, "I'm-up-to-no-good" look, and if there was one thing that Jeff Winger did not need in his life it was Annie Edison tempting him to not do good.

Again, not because it was like that with him and Annie. The group was family in a weird sort of way that usually didn't make sense. He just had to keep telling himself that: They were all siblings, except that Troy and Britta were sort of dating now. And when he pretended that Shirley was his wife. And that couple of hundred times that him and Britta had sex. And the one time when, well, he might have slipped his tongue in Annie Edison's mouth. But the point was that he was drunk and Annie was looking sly and he wasn't going to "Ian Duncan" this. Annie Edison was family. Annie Edison was family. Annie Edison was extraordinarily sexy but still... _family_.

"You need to go to bed," Jeff said, chuckling a little. "That's the rule: when you start spilling your drink, you don't get to drink it any more."

Her lips turned down instantly in this overdone frown. "But Jeff," she whined as Jeff delicately took the wine glass from her hand. She wasn't necessarily arguing, which was good, because he hadn't thought of what would happen if she started in on her stubborn-Annie routine. "But Jeff, we were going to start a packing list."

Jeff set her wine glass back on the kitchen table and raised his eyebrows. "Okay, first, that sounds like the last thing I want to do with the first day of my seriously limited summer vacation. Second, we don't leave for another two weeks, Annie. Third, I am a grown-ass man, not a thirteen year-old boy leaving for camp."

The stain on the front of her shirt was a long, straight trail that lead all the way to her bellybutton. She pointed a finger at him before slurring, "Take that back! Packing lists are fun!"

He couldn't help but laugh, a real sort of laugh. Annie was still Annie, no matter how much wine was sloshing around in her brain. He rested his hands on her shoulders, smiled down at her. "I take it back. Packing lists are on the pinnacle of fun and pure delight."

Annie squinted her eyes, pointed her finger closer to his face. "I have the distinct feeling that you're lying to me, Jeff Winger"

"Why you would have the impression, I have no idea," he said before quickly rotating her shoulders towards her room. He guided her there with a few wobbly steps on both their parts. Her skin was hot underneath his own palms, but he tried to ignore. _Just a flush from all that alcohol_, Jeff told the inside of his brain, the part that still said that her mouth tasted sweet from wine and that her skin probably tasted like her vanilla-y shampoo she always used. But he was drunk – sort of – and so he managed to guide her to her bedroom and manged to convince her to go to sleep.

"No," she said stubbornly, and a part of his stomach sunk. The halfway-sober/halfway-drunk Annie was the worst sort of Annie; it was the kind of Annie that he thought might be the worst to resist.

A strap from her tank top drooped down to the middle of her arm. "No," she repeated. "You can't just leave because..." and then she giggled before leaning in closer, "... because _I'm drunk." _

"Yes, you _are _drunk," he noted before shaking his head. "Are you sure that you can handle sleeping right now?" Challenging her to sleep was the best option he could come up with, because he was sure that the competitive side of her would rear its super-Adderall-stained head when given a challenge. He knew that feeling, that double-dare feeling... it was the same sort of mentality that drove Jeffrey Winger. And, after all, him and Annie Edison were sort of the same person.

"Yes!" Annie slurred before shimmying her shoulders. "Yes, I'm _fine_." For a second, Jeff worried that all that wine might come up in a purple-stained mess, but before he had time to dwell on that situation, Annie looked at him and said "Could you help me? Take this off me?"

His brain froze. Like, literally froze in place. He looked down to Annie, who was holding her arms above her head, her face looking at him expectedly. He knew that things were super close between all of them. Hell, he'd give a kidney for their life. But take off Annie's shirt? Well. Yes, but no. It wasn't like that. They had got emotions all confused before, he knew that. And, _yes_, maybe on a strange night he would imagine her lips on his and how good it felt, how it was somehow (and this sounded totally stupid) completely different it felt. Because kissing was just kissing, and Jeff Winger knew that. But kissing Annie Edison was sort of strange in a good way. Kissing Annie Edison had been like this warm dose of fire inside of him, the type that wasn't just simply a tightening in his groin. She was sort of like finding this strange ending to this unfinished sentence inside. But. that's beside the point, because she was asking him to take off her shirt, and she was looking at him like this was just something that he should do, no questions asked.

"Uhhhh..." he mummured before Annie interrupted.

"The last time I tried to get out of my shirt after so much wine, Abed had to cut away my shirt," she said, all her words slurring together.

Jeff blinked. He hadn't expected that. He knew that Annie and Abed's relationship had been... unique from day one. It was the sort that thrived on a little imagination, something that Annie could understand to a certain extent (more than Shirley, less than Troy). The emotion behind it was misplaced, he was sure, but that still didn't make this strange growl rise in his throat.

"Too bad Abed isn't here," he said before he reached down and flipped the shirt over her head.

Her hair was messy, this strange mismatch sort of thing that fell around her face. The shirt was hanging in his hand, and she was staring at him like she wasn't quite sure what to do with herself.

And even though they were both drunk in that moment, Jeff knew he had done something irreversible. Or irreversible because no matter how quickly he physically could put Annie Edison's shirt back on, the point was now that he had seen her with her shirt off. She was wearing this teal polka-dot bra that he had caught when she bent low for her notes when she would drop them before class. It wasn't an explicitly sexy bra, it wasn't supposed to be anything but utilitarian, but he could see the paleness of her skin and this freckle that was on the swell just below her clavicle, and all of a sudden he couldn't find his breathe.

"I, uh..." he said, and Annie just stood there, breathing hard, her chest rising and falling in this... stupid way that made every part of him tingle.

"Thanks for helping," she whispered. She reached over, took the shirt from his hand gingerly, and then throw it in her laundry basket. She pulled back the blankets to her bed and crawled in. Her eyes were closed and her voice was throaty when she said, "You okay to drive home? You could... stay here if you'd like."

There was something in her voice that snapped him out of some sort of drunken/naked-girl haze that was filtering through his brain. Jeff blinked, sucked in a large lungful of air. "Uh, yeah! Yeah, I'll be fine. No need to worry about me."

"I kind of..." Annie's voice was fading, and he could tell that she was fading into this sweet someplace of awake and asleep. "I kind of _do_ worry about you, Jeff. I worry because I think you're going on this trip not for the credit-hours."

He felt something inside him hitch. Oh. Shit. She was on to him. "What? You think that I'd actually go on this trip because I... wanted to? Because that isn't true!" Which wasn't a complete lie, not if one considered that the only reason he was going on this idiotic trip was to make sure that Ian Duncan kept his slimy, pale hands to himself instead of on Annie Edison.

Annie yawned, this sort of kitten yawn where her tongue stuck out and her arms stretched above her head. She smiled at him, but her eyes were half-closed. "Maybe. Maybe that's so... but I think you're starting to crack, Jeff Winger. I think that you were seeing that this summer was going to be, well, was going to be _lonely_. And you didn't want to be lonely. _You_ wanted to be with your friends, huh?"

Jeff stared at her for a second, caught-off-guard; he hadn't expected that answer. Not at all. Eyeing her, he bit his lip. Her arms were still above her head and her eyes were shaded by her absurdly dark lashes. This grin that was on her face was equal parts coy and gentle. The light in her room was this pinkish hue and her face, even through its drunkenness, was soft, ethereal looking.

"Goodnight, Annie," he said before turning around. Flipping the light switch, her heard her mumble, "Night night. Don't let the bed bugs bite." She shifted, and he was sure that she was instantly asleep. He stood at the threshold of her room, staring at the dark form of her in her bed. Then, shaking his head, Jeff wandered into the living room, his mind thinking so hard, he was sure that he would develop a headache.

Lonely. She had said that he was lonely. Which was great, not that he was lonely, but that she had developed this assumption. She hadn't connected the discussion they had earlier about her and Duncan with some sort of protection/bodyguard plan on his part. But, seriously, though. Him? Lonely? Jeff Winger was anything but lonely. If anything, he just wanted some peace and quiet once in a while without someone calling him with some sort of "emergency" where Abed has started harassing children who weren't buying _Inspector Spacetime_ merchandise and Jeff needed to talk him down, and etc, etc. He was sick of being the group's savior, was sick of being the one everyone called.

"Lonely, my ass." Jeff went to the kitchen table, picked up the two glasses and started up some warm water in the kitchen sink. "If I'm lonely, then Abed hates doomed television shows."

He tried to focus on washing the dishes instead of dwelling on both the thought of Annie Edison half-naked and the thought of Annie Edison calling out Jeffrey Winger as lonely. After all, he was going on this stupid trip because he wanted to protect a friend, not because he actually needed anyone this summer. Well, strike that – all he needed or wanted to see this summer was his beautiful 60-inch plasma screen TV. He wanted to eat too much ice cream and go to work and not worry about homework and he didn't need to obsess about the fact that this weird little family he had accumulated wouldn't be in his life everyday at nine AM sharp.

So maybe it would kind of... quiet without those troublemakers. Jeff smiled at the thought of listening to Shirley's thinly veiled bitching about Quendra eating carrots for breakfast, or hearing Pierce's overt sexist comments about his Women Studies professor. He thought about Britta complaining about economic disparity in Zambia and Abed giving a play-by-play of Breaking Bad with Troy providing sound effects. And then he thought of Annie Edison being happy about stupid shit, like chocolate pudding in the cafeteria. He thought of all of that and then realized that none of that would happen this summer, or in the summer he had once planned. And now, now he was at least going to see... well, hopefully going to see Ian Duncan not molest Annie Edison.

Okay, so maybe she had got to him. Maybe the thought of being able to hang out with Annie Edison all summer was a nice thought. She had this way of sort of... getting him without trying to be his mother or perpetuating his bullshit. She was a good blend of this person that Jeff Winger always wanted to be and the person he was never going to be rid of. Because the fact was that she was sort of a sonuvabitch sometimes but at the same time she wouldn't stand for him to pull out his one-liners about "dying alone" and "truth being relative." She didn't buy his talk that his heart was dead, and he sort of thanked his luck that she wasn't. Annie Edison pulled Jeffrey Winger out of some dark times, and he was grateful for that.

He sat in the dimness of her apartment for a couple minutes, trying to sober up quickly. Her presence in the other room was like this strange feeling in the back of his head that wouldn't go away, like a song that was stuck in-loop in his brain. The image of her in that stupid worn-out bra was going to haunt his dreams, but he had already accepted this. But the fact was that her words were reverberating inside his head more than the image of her alcohol-red chest rising and falling in her surprised breathes. Okay, the whole shirtless thing had some weight, but really – honestly – it was what she had said that got to Jeff Winger, that stayed inside of him.

"Lonely?" He glared at a picture that Annie kept on a bookcase near the living room. It was a picture of all of them at Christmas, right after they almost performed that horrific Glee club ensemble. They were all wearing these Christmas sweaters and grinning like idiots. A smile spread over his mouth for a second before he realized what he was doing.

Running a hand over his face, Jeff spoke to the quiet air in front of him, "You've got to get it together, Winger." He stood up, thought about leaving, but ended up going to the picture. He picked it up, looking at it closely; his hand was draped around Pierce's shoulder and his other arm was wrapped around Annie's waist. He remembered that, remembered being so close to her that he could smell the shampoo she always used. She had touched his hand with her cool fingers for a second, her neck arching back so that she could smile at him. It was one of those moments, one of those maddening Annie moments that stuck in his head like glue and wouldn't leave. However, Pierce had made a fart joke and they had quickly uncoiled from any embrace, so that was that.

Shaking his head, he felt a grin still ghosting his face. Jeff put the picture back and decided he had sobered up enough, even if that warm feeling in his chest – the feeling he had blamed on wine beforehand – was still still deep inside of him.

He drove home still grinning.


End file.
